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Adobe Buys Macromedia for $3.4B

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the thats-a-whole-lotta-bread dept.

Kobayashi Maru writes "A press release from Adobe announces that they will buy Macromedia for approximately $3.4 billion. The new company will be called Adobe Systems, Inc."

5 of 937 comments (clear)

  1. I for one... by bcmm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I for one wellcome our new massive software giant overlords...

    Are they going to keep the Macromedia branding and just not compete with each other, or will we see Adobe Dreameaver?

    And will the flash plugin have that terrible update software like Acrobat reader?
    This is probably not good for anyone except Adobe, including us.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  2. What will this mean for SVG? by bingo_tailspin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    SVG is Flash's biggest rival, but Adobe has always supported it. I hope this means there will be more open standards in Macromedia Flash.

  3. Re:Flash! by Rosyna · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, this deal could mean the end of the multiverse as we know. Much of what was driving these two companies was their never ending battle to do the other one better. Many conventions, documentation, "classes" compared one company's product to another and if one company was lacking a feature the other had, they'd try to outdo it by a large margin.

    Now, what silly patent/legal battle do we have to watch that occurs between two behemoths that basically were the entire industry.

  4. Re:I'm scared. :( by downward+dog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I agree completely, which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when I got my first Mac last fall. "Preview" (the universal file reader in OS X) is extremely fast and is well integrated with the OS. If a free, bundled app with a generic name can handle PDF files without locking up a computer, why can't Adobe do the same?

    (Not trying to start a religious war here. I regularly use both platforms, with a healthy bit of Linux thrown in.)

  5. Re:Flash! by jest3r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually not really. Their legal squabbles over the past few years have ended up hurting consumers. Macromedia changed the Flash UI how many times? Furthermore both product lines are already so similar that is is expensive for small design houses to buy both.

    Hopefully certain applications (Livemotion, GoLive, Freehand) will be deprecated for good after the merger and others will finally get a solid standardized interface (Flash), while others will be merged so consumers can get the best of both worlds (Photoshop, Fireworks).